Moore Breaks Industry M&A Silence

TORONTO—Who says there aren’t any major acquisitions in the commercial printing industry any more?

As a host of industry rollups plod their way through turbulent times, Moore Corp. has thrown down the big-dollar gauntlet. Fresh off a year in which CEO Robert Burton implemented a $100 million cost-savings initiative, a leaner and meaner Moore ushered in the 2002 campaign by announcing it has entered into an agreement to acquire a privately held commercial printer, The Nielsen Co.

Nielsen, which chalked up revenues of $90 million in 2001, has three manufacturing facilities located in Cincinnati, Florence, KY, and Raleigh-Durham, NC. With 730 employees, The Nielsen Co. has been in business for 75 years.

According to Burton, this move is in line with his game plan for Moore Corp. “I stated a year ago that we needed to be a stronger participant in the highly fragmented, $70 billion North American commercial print market,” he says. “The acquisition of The Nielsen Co. creates a platform for us to offer a commercial print capability to our customers while simultaneously providing Nielsen’s existing customers with the opportunity to benefit from Moore’s products and services.

“We continue to execute on the plan we initiated when we came to Moore,” he adds. “With the acquisition of The Nielsen Co., we continue to deliver on our commitment to grow the company both organically and through thoughtful, strategic acquisitions of quality companies in higher growth sectors of the printing marketplace. We feel that this addition will provide significant opportunities for Moore to capture incremental sales from new customers through our ‘one-stop’ approach to servicing customers.”

Nielsen specializes in products such as annual reports, brochures, catalogs, pharmaceutical inserts, as well as marketing and promotional materials. Its top customers include a number of Fortune 500 companies in the consumer, pharmaceutical and financial services industries.